"I Just Want to be Average" vs. "Learning to Read"

I have recently read the essays "I Just Want to be Average" by Mike Rose and Malcolm X's "Learning to Read". In Mike Rose's child hood story he describes his education from  freshman year in high school to graduation. He went into detail about his experience as an adolescent youth who didn’t care much for school and how he gradually began to bloom into an intellectual who wanted to succeed, all thanks to his senior year English teacher.

In Malcolm X's narrative he explained how he learned to read, all on his own, in prison with nothing but a previous 8th grade education. Both of these articles are very different but very similar at the same time. They differ because both of these individuals come from completely contrary backgrounds. One is a black man that grew up hustling on the streets, went to prison for seven years, and through isolation began to improve his literacy skills. The other a grew up a middle class white boy who attended a catholic school as a adolescent who didn't care much for learning until he found a great role model to motivate him and encourage him to excel in literacy. 

These two essays are also very similar. They both acquired a want to improve themselves articulately, literally, and to become well read in many diverse subjects. They both made a choice to develop themselves as individuals instead of "remaining average". Though determination and a want to better them selves and become something greater, they both accomplished something they never thought of as possible, and granted themselves better lives so that they could make a difference in others as well.